“Well, Mistress Anne, that is what I can’t tell—­no, not I; but I knows this, that the child has had a narrow escape of his precious life, and I’d never trust him again with that there Sedley—­no, not for hundreds of pounds.”

“You really think, Ralph—?”

“What can I think, ma’am?  When I finds he’s been a-setting that there child to slide up to where he’d be drownded as sure as he’s alive, and you see, if we gets ill news of Master Archfield (which God forbid), there’s naught but the boy atween him and this here place—­and he over head and ears in debt.  Be it what it might that the child saw, it saved the life of him.”

“Did you see it?”

“No, Mistress Anne; I can’t say as I did.  I only heard the little master cry out as he fell.  I was in the shed, you see, taking a pipe to keep me warm.  And when I took him up, he cried out like one dazed.  ’Twas Penny Grim, Ralph!  Keep me.  He is come to steal me.”  But Sir Philip wouldn’t hear nothing of it, only blamed Master Phil for being foolhardy, and for crying for the fall, and me for letting him out of sight.”

“And Mr. Sedley—­did he see it?”

“Well, mayhap he did, for I saw him as white as a sheet and his eyes staring out of his head; but that might have been his evil conscience.”

“What became of him?”

“To say the truth, ma’am, I believe he be at the Brocas Arms, a-drowning of his fright—­if fright it were, with Master Harling’s strong waters.”

“But this apparition, this shape—­or whatever it is?  What put it into Master Philip’s head?  What has been heard of it?”

Ralph looked unwilling.  “Bless you, Mistress Anne, there’s been some idle talk among the women folk, as how that there crooked slip of Major Oakshott’s, as they called Master Perry or Penny, and said was a changeling, has been seen once and again.  Some says as the fairies have got him, and ’tis the seven year for him to come back again.  And some says that he met with foul play, and ’tis the ghost of him, but I holds it all mere tales, and I be sure ’twere nothing bad as stopped little master on that there pond.  So I be.”

Anne could not but be of the same mind, but her confusion, alarm, and perplexity were great.  It seemed strange, granting that this were either spirit or elf connected with Peregrine Oakshott, that it should interfere on behalf of Charles Archfield’s child, and on the sweet hypothesis that a guardian angel had come to save the child, it was in a most unaccountable form.

And more pressing than any such mysterious idea was the tangible horror of Ralph’s suggestion, too well borne out by the boy’s own unconscious account of the adventure.  It was too dreadful, too real a peril to be kept to herself, and she carried the story to her uncle on his return, but without speaking of the spectral warning.  Not only did she know that he would not attend to it, but the hint,